cissitudes of existence, the world belonged to the living.

CHAPTER V--MORAL EFFECTS

The mental shock sustained by all nations during the prevalence of the
Black Plague is without parallel and beyond description. In the eyes of
the timorous, danger was the certain harbinger of death; many fell
victims to fear on the first appearance of the distemper, and the most
stout-hearted lost their confidence. Thus, after reliance on the future
had died away, the spiritual union which binds man to his family and his
fellow-creatures was gradually dissolved. The pious closed their
accounts with the world--eternity presented itself to their view--their
only remaining desire was for a participation in the consolations of
religion, because to them death was disarmed of its sting.

Repentance seized the transgressor, admonishing him to consecrate his
remaining hours to the exercise of Christian virtues. All minds were
directed to the contemplation of futurity; and children, who manifest the
more elevated feelings of the soul without alloy, were frequently seen,
while labouring under the plague, breathing out their spirit with prayer
and songs of thanksgiving.

An awful sense of contrition seized Christians of every communion; they
resolved to forsake their vices, to make restitution for past offences,
before they were summoned hence, to seek reconciliation with their Maker,
and to avert, by self-chastisement, the punishment due to their former
sins. Human nature would be exalted, could the countless noble actions
which, in times of most imminent danger, were performed in secret, be
recorded for the instruction of future generations. They, however, have
no influence on the course of worldly events. They are known only to
silent eyewitnesses, and soon fall into oblivion. But hypocrisy,
illusion, and bigotry stalk abroad undaunted; they desecrate what is
noble, they pervert what is divine, to the unholy purposes of
selfishness, which hurries along every good feeling in the false
excitement of the age. Thus it was in the years of this plague. In the
fourteenth century, the monastic system was still in its full vigour, the
power of the ecclesiastical orders and brotherhoods was revered by the
people, and the hierarchy was still formidable to the temporal power. It
was therefore in the natural constitution of society that bigoted zeal,
which in such times makes a show of public acts of penance, should avail
itself of the